the feast

I once saw yellow with you.

My fingers wrap around the colors of your name on the page, pooled in words like
“bitterness.” Words like “I don’t remember” and “I couldn’t. Not so close
to the end.”

Your eyes were forests beneath forests when I knew you, and I had no idea.
Two weeks in a swirl of color. If I turned back you shook me,
yelling “Do you know what you’re saying?”

Then everything fell between us, thick as strokes of calligraphy
on swag.  Filthy cloth, varying hundreds of miles, and time,
sweet time.

I once saw yellow with you.

Means nothing. Yellow is the color of sickness, twisting up through my stomach
to clamp on my flipping heart. Of the sun sifting through the white
and setting the rain aflame.

To think you despaired when you dug holes in the damp foreign soil,
believing you left no stairway when, after all,
I walked away with you with me.

Now nothing justifies the way my heart feasts on you, gorging itself
and carrying on gymnastics all the same. The tastes of blood
and years and jealousy.

I saw yellow with you.
I couldn't. Not so close
to the end.